Brief encounters

12:00AM BST 15 May 2003

No-win, no-fee agreements are a handy way of opening up the libel courts to claimants who cannot afford the cost of litigation. But the media lawyer David Price has now demonstrated - apparently for the first time - that they can be put to good use by defendants as well.

Richmond Pharmacology Ltd was sued for defamation by a longer-established competitor, Charterhouse Clinical Research. Mr Price agreed to defend Richmond on a conditional fee basis and his clients bought £100,000 of insurance cover from Litigation Protection Ltd against the risk that they might lose and be ordered to pay the claimant's costs. But they won, and Charterhouse agreed to pay Mr Price's bill of £167,000. That included his "success fee" of 50 per cent and reimbursement of the £22,500 insurance premium paid by his clients.

Mr Price said: "We are totally committed to conditional fee litigation as the best way of defending defamation and media claims."

Mr Justice Peter Smith, appointed last year to the High Court, emerges as the least popular Chancery judge in a survey of lawyers just published by Legal Business magazine. Mr Justice Neuberger came out best with Mr Justice Etherton a close second. But nobody was as testy as Mr Justice Harman, now retired.

One young advocate was told that Chancery judges preferred a bright "good morning, My Lord" to the more formal "May it please your Lordship". Apparently, Mr Justice Harman responded to this informality with "shock, disgust and rage", and the barrister narrowly escaped contempt proceedings.

Congratulations to Barbara Fontaine, the first woman to become a Master of the Supreme Court. Queen's Bench Masters are junior judges who take much of the workload off High Court judges and their title is an ancient one, dating back to the Magistrae - or Masters - of the Duchy of Normandy Court, founded in Rouen in AD 891, which became the Court of Exchequer after the Norman Conquest. So it would be a pity to change it now - and lawyers might get some odd looks if they said they were going out for an hour "to see the Mistress".

I am assured by the Home Office that, contrary to my report last week, no news agencies or newspapers were briefed in advance of David Blunkett's announcement at 6am on Wednesday on sentences for murder; only the broadcasting organisations were given the story, under embargo, the afternoon before.

But why did Mr Blunkett wait a week before publishing the details? Was it because the amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill, far from insisting that "life must mean life", say that "detailed consideration of aggravating or mitigating factors may result in a minimum term of any length"?